THE  FIRST GENTLEMAN OF EUROPE
Crown; these latter had, in accordance with the invari-
able British custom, been cut to the bone almost before
the ink was dry on the treaty of peace. As a young man
Liverpool had witnessed with his own eyes the storming
of the Bastille, and, like Pitt, he fully appreciated the fact
that had the government of Louis XVI shown any firm-
ness the situation would have been saved. It was only
forty years before that the Gordon Riots had devastated
London, and contemporary foreign opinion was far from
taking the complacent view of the British situation which
has been expressed by many later historians. Louis XVIII,
as shrewd a critic as any in Europe, wrote to Decazes,
then French ambassador in London, in 1820 that the
progress of events formed a close parallel with what had
happened in France in the summer of lySg,^1 and he was
certainly not alone in holding this point of view. The
facts were such as to justify the gravest apprehensions.
The Government was "not called upon to deal merely
with merry peasants and innocuous idealists",^2 for there
were desperate schemes afoot in some quarters. There
can be little doubt that the influence of Cobbett, exerted
through The Weekly Register, had much to do with
fanning the flames of revolt, though it must be admitted
that Cobbett himself never advocated recourse to actual
violence, and some of his opinions were definitely Tory in
character. Yet his plea for sweeping reforms reached the
ears of many who were none too scrupulous as to the
means by which they might be attained. All over the
country there were revolutionary clubs which demanded
universal suffrage and annual Parliaments, and they were
assisted by the slump that began soon after the war came
^1	cf. Daudet, E.: L'Ambassade du Due Decants €n Angleterre^ p. 129.
^2	Felling, K.: Sketches in Nineteenth Century Biography^ p. 27.
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